


Five Items Daniel Keeps in His Nightstand Drawer

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 5 Things, Community: sg1_five_things, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Memories, Sleep, fears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-02
Updated: 2006-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian





	Five Items Daniel Keeps in His Nightstand Drawer

Mace. The kind of people who will most likely come for him in the night, if anybody ever comes for him in the night, are not the kind of people who will be deterred by a little burst of pepper spray, and they won't give him time to reach over and open the drawer and fumble it out and unsnap the foldover cover and aim it and spray, plus it's kind of been in there a while and who knows if it even works anymore, but what the hell, it can't hurt, and it's better than keeping a loaded sidearm this close to where he sleeps, and it shuts Jack up.

A mini-maglite. There are two real flashlights, big and bigger, on top of the nightstand and down on the floor beside the bed, but batteries have been known to crap out and he's been known to knock down into some unreachable spot the things he gropes around for when he first wakes up and doesn't have his glasses on yet, and there are two things he needs to know are right there close to hand no matter what. One is his glasses, and the other is a light source.

Two old pairs of glasses.

A notebook with a ballpoint pen stuck in the spiral binding, and a scattering of extra pens and a few pencils and a little tiny manual pencil sharpener. And, OK, a couple of other notebooks. And a Sharpie and two regular felt-tips. And a memo pad ...

An Arabic dictionary, because it's crazy how many times he's woken up in a sweat because he couldn't remember the word for this or for that in his first language, and it's not that it's only escaped him for a moment but it's on the tip of his tongue, he really _can't remember_ \-- and he can't get back to sleep until he's looked it up and he knows the word again. The holes in his head are worst at night, little prickling pinpoints of absence. He thinks that sleep helps fill them in, dreams healing and sealing and filling and smoothing. But it's often enough that he has to do a quick spackling job, and the sooner he can resume his interrupted rest the better.


End file.
